The number of city restaurants has grown 40% in the past decade, creating a major shortage of talented staff.

Daniel Boulud believes he has a solution to the acute labor shortage in the restaurant industry: a European-style apprenticeship program that taps high-school students, drawing them into the job pool in partnership with the city's Department of Education.

At any one time, the French chef has between 10 to 30 job openings in his seven restaurants and catering business in New York City. His plight is similar to that of restaurants citywide that offer both fine and casual dining.

In fact, the restaurant industry, one of the fastest-growing in the city, has been hobbled by an inability to attract enough workers. During the past six months, there have been an average of 2,500 open kitchen positions at any one time, estimates Luke Fryer, chief executive of Harri.com, a new job site that connects restaurants and employees.

"People talk about the long-term unemployed, but for the restaurant industry it's the opposite: The position goes unfilled," he said.

With the number of eateries increasing more than 40% during the past decade, to more than 20,000 in the city, the market has become extremely competitive, especially among culinary-school graduates, whose skills are in high demand. Though restaurants are starved for workers, they can't compete against each other on pay because their profit margins are thin and they are loath to raise their menu prices for fear of driving diners away.

Flat wages

That has kept wages low. Despite high demand, the average annual salary in the food-service sector in the city was $25,025, including tips, in 2012, or just 2% more than in 2011, according to New York Department of Labor data. The growth of fast-food and "quick-casual" restaurants which pay $8 an hour, compared with companies like Mr. Boulud's Dinex Group that start kitchen workers at $11 or $12 an hour—may also contribute to stagnating wages. But even $12 an hour is tight for employees given the high cost of living in New York.

Mr. Boulud is cooking up at least a partial remedy. His business partner, Lili Lynton, reached out to the DOE about a month ago to address Dinex's increasing turnover rate—a number the company began systematically tracking last year, expecting to have a full year of data in 2014.

The plan involves recruiting a handful of New York City high-school students into its kitchens in September, when they will start internship programs to learn basic skills from Mr. Boulud's elite staff. Then, upon graduation, they would be eligible to become apprentices at the Dinex Group.

"We are in the early stages of outlining what the partnership would be," said Diallo Shabazz, senior director of partnerships and sustainability education with the DOE, adding that it could "create a talent pipeline" for Dinex and become a template the city could implement with other employers.

The DOE oversees 13 technical culinary schools and has placed students in internships for years—with companies such as Union Square Hospitality Group and Bryant Park Grill—but it has never had a culinary apprenticeship program like the kind that is popular in Europe. Those typically last two years and result in full-time employment.

Restaurateurs believe that cultivating their own talent will lead to greater employee loyalty—or so they hope. Culinary schools, they say, have contributed to high turnover rates because their graduates often carry hefty loans and will switch jobs for even small increases in pay.

"We appreciate that they have these skills, but they are skills they could learn on the job," said Ms. Lynton. "This is about retention, not saving money" on younger, less-skilled workers, she said.

Mr. Boulud learned his craft as an apprentice, not in culinary school.

Even so, culinary-school graduates have an edge in the marketplace. The unemployment rate for them is low to nonexistent.

"The job market for our students is very strong," said Maureen Drum Fagin, director of career services and administration for the Institute of Culinary Education, which charges up to $36,840 for a degree. These days, ICE students do more advanced kitchen work as part of their practical training.

"Years ago, they were doing purely prep tasks," said Ms. Drum Fagin, "but because of the acute shortage of staff, they are going on the line sooner to get to a higher level."

The DOE's internship program has also been a source for employers. Union Square Hospitality Group, for example, has had students from Food and Finance High School on West 50th Street serve as interns in its kitchens since 2010, assigning one student to each of its nine restaurants.

"We take high-school interns with the hope that they work for us while they are in [college or culinary school]," said Sabato Sagaria, chief restaurant officer of USHG. "It's like a three-month hiring process. We have to be more creative about the doors we are knocking on." Each USHG kitchen has about three to five openings at any given time of the year.

Roger Turgeon, the principal of Food and Finance—and a former professional chef—is open to working with Dinex to ramp up the program, provided that the internship-apprentice track has an educational component that involves at least an associate's degree.

Easy to train

"One of my primary concerns is to continue our students' education," said Mr. Turgeon. "I wouldn't want them to do this without the commitment for a formal education. An employer is always going to give the person with a degree the promotion over someone who doesn't have a degree," he pointed out.

Schools like Food and Finance would be responsible for vetting which students would be eligible for the program with Dinex and other potential participants.

While DOE fleshes out the details of a standardized apprenticeship program, it is in discussions with food-industry insiders and hosting symposia to learn what skills students need to learn to be successful.

"We have been hearing that younger workers are more eager to learn new skills, and are easier to train," said Mr. Shabazz.

Correction: There are 10 to 30 job openings at Daniel Boulud's company, Dinex Group, at any one time. The frequency of the available positions was misstated in an earlier version of this article originally published online April 5, 2014.

A version of this article appears in the May 5, 2014, print issue of Crain's New York Business as "Star chef preps recipe to address jobs crisis".